


some of us we have tattoos

by dustofwarfare



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Final Fantasy XV Kink Meme, M/M, Mostly Humorous, because prompto, crazy!uncle!ardyn is always my favorite, prompto saves the world, slightly crackish, this was very fun to write
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 18:23:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14478546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustofwarfare/pseuds/dustofwarfare
Summary: “And if you were so determined to shackle me with a soulmate,” he continues, because Ardyn has never learned when to give uporstop talking, “You could have, oh, I don’t know, at least made the name legible. I’m not even sure that is a name.”What he is sure, though, is that this is a problem.(In which Ardyn, poised to make his carefully cultivated plan of revenge a reality, discovers a soulmate mark on his wrist. But he can't tell if it's a name or an adjective, because his soulmate has the worst handwriting he's everseen.)





	some of us we have tattoos

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so there was this prompt on the kink meme for: 
> 
> Any has known from the name on their wrist that they're destined to be with someone - unfortunately that someone has absolutely terrible penmanship and they can't for the life of them make out what it says.
> 
> ...and this is what I came up with? 
> 
> Look. As much as I love Ardyn Izunia being evil, _and I love that a lot_ , I'm apparently REALLY easy for any fic in which I can make Ardyn the crazy uncle of the Lucis Caelum line. And Prompto saving the world just by being Prompto is my jam. 
> 
> This is meant to be cute and humorous, and hopefully the OP wasn't like "....what on earth, why," at what I have produced. SOMETIMES YOU JUST WANT A SOULMATE MARK TO FIX THE SAD THINGS IN LIFE OKAY 
> 
> (lyrics from the Frank Turner song "Tattoos")

It’s been so long, so  _very, very long_ , and finally it is time for his plan to come to fruition.   
  
Soon, he will watch the city he once founded fall beneath the might of the Empire he’s played like a puppet on his strings.   
  
The Chosen King is naught but a boy of twenty, but under Ardyn’s merciless tutelage, he will become so much more. The tool for his vengeance, the weapon that will slit his own throat and end his brother’s hated line.   
  
That’s when the soulmate mark shows up on the inside of his wrist.   
  
Ardyn looks at it and frowns. This shouldn’t – it shouldn’t be possible. He’s the Accursed. The Starscourge made flesh. He doesn’t even have a  _soul_ , how can he have a soulmate?   
  
“You couldn’t have done this at some point during the bloody 400s, when I was so bored I honestly sat in the same  _chair_ for the duration of the century?” Ardyn asks the sky, as if perhaps the Astrals might answer. They don’t, of course.   
  
Even in this, he is forsaken. Unsurprising, really. Ardyn learned to hold a grudge from the best.   
  
“And if you were so determined to shackle me with a soulmate,” he continues, because Ardyn has never learned when to give up or stop talking, “You could have, oh, I don’t  _know_ , at least made the name legible. I’m not even sure that  _is_  a name.”   
  
What he is sure, though, is that this is a problem. A distraction.   
  
Then again, what are the chances Ardyn will meet this soulmate of his? Slim to none, he imagines. He’ll call down the darkness, his soulmate will be devoured by a mindflayer and the Chosen King will end Ardyn’s existence as he is fated to do.   
  
This will change nothing.   
  
***  
  
(It changes everything)   
  
***  
  
Ardyn meets the Chosen King at Galdin Quay with his retinue. He doesn’t give his name, it isn’t time for that. This is only the opening salvo.   
  
He only has eyes for the prince; this weapon of destruction that will bring about his end. He doesn’t look like much, really. There are a few similarities to Ardyn’s long-dead brother, the so-called Founder King, in Noctis’s features; the same midnight blue eyes, the same dark hair that shines almost navy in the sun. But by the time the final confrontation comes, he will wield the sword of his father and he will do what must be done. Ardyn will see to it.   
  
Ardyn also sees echoes of his own features when he, too, was young and naïve and thought the world a fair place ruled by just gods. He knows better, now. By the time Noctis ascends, he’ll know better, too. Ardyn will also see to  _that_.   
  
As for the prince’s retainers, Ardyn pays them little attention. He doesn’t offer his name, and he doesn’t bother to learn theirs, either.   
  
***  
  
(He should have.)  
  
***  
  
“Wait,” the little blond one says, blinking at him in the bright sun. He cocks his head, staring at Ardyn like a curious chocobo. “You – your name is Ardyn?”  
  
Ardyn hates repeating himself. “Yes,” he says, keeping his affable expression.  
  
The blond kid’s eyes go wide. He looks down at his wrist, rubbing two fingers over it. Ardyn can see him swallow as he shifts on his feet. “Um. Do you – uh, how do you spell that?”   
  
They are in Lestallum. The point of this entire endeavor is to deliver Noctis to the Archeon, so that he might make his covenant with Titan.   
  
It is not the time for a  _spelling bee_.   
  
“As I was  _saying_ ,” Ardyn huffs, ignoring the chocobo. “Aren't nursery rhymes curious things? Like this one.  _From the deep, the Archaean calls…Yet on deaf ears, the gods' tongue—_ ”   
  
“Like, A-R-D-Y-N, Ardyn?” the chocobo chirps.   
  
Ardyn fixes the blond nuisance with a stare. “Oh, we’re still on that, are we? Yes, that’s how you spell it.” Perhaps he’s recognized Ardyn as the Niflheim chancellor? Honestly, he expected the serious one with the glasses – Igor, or something – to have done that already. What sort of royal advisor doesn’t recognize the  _imperial chancellor_  of the nation with which his kingdom is at war?   
  
“So, uh. I’m Prompto,” the young man says.   
  
“Apparently,” Ardyn says, resisting the urge to cuff him on the back of his fluffy head. He doubts the lad speaks old Lucian, so perhaps the reference is lost on him. It doesn’t matter. Ardyn doesn’t have time to explain semantics or word play to someone wearing a sleeveless vest. “Perhaps you would be so good as to not interrupt me.”   
  
“Sure, it’s just. You probably…ow!” Prompto aims an offended look at the muscular, shirtless one who’s just elbowed him very hard in the side.   
  
“Not the time,” Shirtless says, his voice a growl.   
  
Ardyn’s eyes narrow. He’s not sure why. He’d just been thinking about hitting the chocobo himself, and yet, when Shirtless did it…hmph. Shirtless would make a rather good iron giant, wouldn’t he? They don’t tend to wear shirts, either.   
  
Prompto rubs his arm and sort of shrugs, and Ardyn goes back to his nursery rhyme. He keeps his eyes on Shirtless, and he’d really prefer the man take a few steps away from Prompto. Even if he’s not sure why.   
  
Maybe the man flaunting his abs like that offends Ardyn?   
  
Unlikely. He’s the Accursed but he’s not blind, he’s always appreciated a well-honed physique. Perhaps he just finds dealing with Noctis’s retainers a bother, but that, too, seems a bit of a stretch considering how  _many_  people he’s had to manipulate over the years.   
  
Ah, well. Where was he? Right.   
  
“Yet on deaf ears, the god’s tongue falls…”   
  
***  
  
(That, it turns out, is more true than he knows.)   
  
***  
  
They stop for the night, and Shirtless suggests camping. Ardyn thinks about the haven runes and pesky old magic that fights against the Scourge, and blandly offers to pay for a night in the caravan.   
  
It’s so very odd. He’s been waiting for so long for Noctis, and yet – and yet. His attention seems to be drawn to the little blond for no reason he can fathom. Perhaps it’s the simple anomaly that the boy is a commoner amongst the retinue of a king. Perhaps it’s the gravity-defying hair, or the bright, bright blue of his eyes, or the way he can’t seem to sit still, ever.   
  
And perhaps a bit of it is how nice his ass looks in those tight denim trousers.   
  
The actual answer comes when Ardyn happens to glance down at the table, where Prompto is keeping score during a game of cards. He’s written everyone’s name up at the top –  _Gladio, Noct, Ignis, Prompto_.   
  
And that’s when Ardyn realizes why Prompto asked how Ardyn spells his name, and why Ardyn wanted to punch Shirtless – Gladio – for touching him, and why he’s so intrigued by the little gunman in the first place.   
  
The handwriting matches the scribbles on his arm. The scribbles, which are not a word in Ardyn’s mother tongue that meant  _ready_  or  _quick_ , but a  _name_.   
  
Prompto. Ardyn’s  _soulmate_.   
  
Ardyn stares, and stares, and stares some more at the paper. Then he reaches out and grabs Prompto’s chin, staring down into his eyes. He feels it, then; the strange bond that marks them as soulmates. The most recent punchline in the comedic performance that is his life, courtesy of whatever Astral is next in line to play a round of  _fuck over Ardyn Lucis Caelum as completely as possible_.  
  
“Your handwriting,” Ardyn says, “is  _terrible_.”   
  
Prompto squeaks. 

***

Ardyn is not very well-versed on soulbond magic. Like prophecies and magic crystals, soulbonds seem to operate under no understandable or consistent set of rules. They’re also quite rare; even when he was mortal, Ardyn knew of them only in theory.   
  
He has no way of knowing that acknowledging a soulbond – which he did, when he stared into Prompto’s pretty blue eyes and made that comment about his abysmal handwriting – means he is no longer alone with his vendetta or his vengeance.   
  
“Dude,” Prompto says, all disapproving. “You were going to let me get eaten by a  _mindflayer_? Not cool. Also, ha, it totally wouldn’t have even worked. I took out, like, six of those guys in this tomb we were in a few days ago.  _Six_. So there!”   
  
“Six mindflayers, huh,” Gladio says. “All by yourself.” 

Prompto clears his throat and glares at Gladio. “Not the point, big guy. But I guess it could be worse. You could have let me get eaten by a flan or something.” He pauses. “Can they do that? They look so squishy.”   
  
“The type of demon that was meant to devour you really isn’t the point,” Ardyn says. He pauses. “And they’re not as squishy as you think.”   
  
“Then what is the point?” Prompto demands, chin tilted. “Er. About your plans, not the flans. But I mean. Also, what's the point if they're not squishy? And don’t lie. Tell us what you’re really after, Ardyn, since it obviously wasn’t about finding your  _soulmate_.” He sounds a bit put out about that. 

 _It's not my fault your name is illegible and also an adjective._  
  
The other thing about soulbonds – apparently one can’t lie to one’s soulmate, either. Which means Ardyn tells them the truth about all of it – his past, the Scourge, his carefully cultivated plans for vengeance, Noctis’s ascension and the bitter truth of the prophecy.   
  
“Huh,” says Prompto, when Ardyn’s finished. He crosses his arms over his chest. “How come you’re smart enough to come up with all of that, and yet you’re wearing like seven different patterns that don’t match?”   
  
Ardyn  _hates_  him.   
  
“So, wait,” Noctis says, staring at him with Somnus’s wide blue eyes – except there’s no hate there, or revulsion. Just a vaguely confused look that might, possibly, be because Noctis has been yawning during the entirety of Ardyn’s sordid tale. The Lucis Caelums always have liked their naps. “We’re related? You’re my….what, great-great-times-a-few-thousand uncle?”   
  
Ardyn tries to remember the last time he attempted to decapitate himself and how badly it hurt. It won’t kill him, but it might horrify everyone enough that they can stop having this conversation. “I suppose so.”   
  
“That means you’re Noct’s step-uncle,” Gladio says, to Prompto.   
  
Ardyn hates them  _all_. “Ignis, be a sport and fetch me one of your cooking knives, won’t you? The sharper the better, please.”   
  
***  
  
Ardyn does not try and decapitate himself. Nor does he kill the Oracle, or do any number of other things that he’s spent the last few centuries planning. And it’s all Prompto’s fault.   
  
It turns out that Prompto isn’t too keen on his soulmate and his best friend enacting a murder-suicide plot  _after_  ten years of unrelenting darkness, during which Prompto’s best friend is kept captive in a glowing rock and the world is ravaged by daemons.   
  
And Prompto is apparently fond of the Oracle because of something having to do with a  _lost puppy_  from his childhood, (and of course it would be because of a lost puppy,  _of course it would_ ), so instead of a very theatrical and symbolism-rich death on a rain-sodden pier in Altissia, Ardyn puts on a suit and attends her wedding to the King of Lucis. Prompto beams through the whole thing, though, and even dances with Ardyn at the reception.   
  
(Years later, Ardyn will escort a very pregnant Luna on a walk in Altissia and gallantly point out where he was going to kill her. She will gasp and press a hand to her breast, blink up at him and say, “Oh, that’s so symbolic,” and Ardyn will be slightly mollified that at least  _she_  appreciates his attention to detail, even if she punches him rather hard in the arm just on principle.)   
  
“Being my soulmate does not mean you are allowed to undermine every single plan I have spent the last  _two thousand years_  devising,” Ardyn snaps at him, when he finds himself somehow dismantling the Magitek program  _and_  negotiating the removal of Imperial troops from the Crown City.   
  
“Kinda seems like maybe it does,” Prompto says. He snaps a picture with his camera. “Lighten up, buddy. Your way was like, the bad ending of a video game, y’know? Like, you chose all the mean dialogue options or whatever, so you went into the final battle with no allies and a low friendship bonus.”   
  
“I don’t know what any of that means,” Ardyn says, and he swears that he can hear someone laughing – probably that overgrown dragon and the ice princess, they’re definitely having a laugh at his expense, he just  _knows_  it.   
  
“You’ve never played a video game?” Prompto pulls out his phone. “This is called  _King’s Knight_. Watch and learn, soulmate. Watch and learn, and come up with better ways to spend your time.”   
  
***  
(He watches. And he learns.   
  
He learns that betrayal is powerful enough to hurt a soul in ways that has nothing to do with Scourges or prophecies or demons. He learns that friendship is a powerful thing, that love can heal, that you really maybe shouldn’t choose all the bad, mean dialogue options as you play through your life or else you really do get to the final battle without a friendship bonus, and with no allies.   
  
He learns that maybe he’s been given a chance to do it all over again, and make the right choices so things end up better than they might have.  
  
He learns that having a soulmate who likes chocobos, energy drinks, bad pop music and names all his guns isn’t actually the worst thing that could have happened to him.)

***

Despite being soulmates, it is a very long time before Ardyn and Prompto ever even kiss.   
  
First, there’s the whole thing where Ardyn is, technically, responsible for the downfall of Insomnia. His nephew is of the same line as Ardyn, so naturally, Noctis is also very good at holding a grudge. Ignis, Gladio, Luna and Prompto all urge Noctis to try and forge some sort of relationship with his distant, formerly-evil uncle. It’s all because they want Noctis to be happy, of course, but they each have their own reasons beyond that.   
  
Ignis says it will be politically expedient, Luna reminds Noctis that Ardyn is his only remaining family, Gladio says that if Ardyn takes one step out of line then Noctis is the only one who can kill him.   
  
Prompto reminds Noctis that he gets soulbond-headaches whenever the two of them are in a room together.  
  
So Ardyn, in order to make amends, spends a great deal of time doing the thing he’s best at – ingratiating himself behind the scenes and making things happen. The Niflheim Empire performs a few belated and sincere apologies to the ice goddess for waking her corpse, and Ardyn delivers a very stiff and grudging apology of his own for giving them the idea in the first place.   
It means that the Niflheim lands destroyed by the Glacian’s ire are no longer cold and dead, and they no longer think the answer to their problems is the Lucian magic crystal.   
  
There’s a peace treaty, and it’s a normal one that doesn’t involve subterfuge and giant monsters (read: it’s terribly boring and pedestrian), and Ardyn even goes so far as to help Ignis find the best contractors for rebuilding the city, and fine, maybe he convinces a few iron giants to haul rocks around at night to expedite the whole process because being good takes  _forever_  and he’d like that fancy suite at the Citadel that he’s going to demand Noctis give him.   
  
What use is being the immortal uncle to the Chosen King if he doesn’t have somewhere comfortable to live?   
  
Eventually Ardyn makes his peace with the others; he tells Noctis about the Lucian kings whose names have been lost to time (“They’re all so dreary, really, Noct, you didn’t miss much”) and shows him a few hidden fishing spots, he promises to read the historical fiction novel Gladio is writing and correct all the inaccuracies, he gives Ignis every recipe he can remember from Solheim up to the present day (except the 400s, Noctis is the only one who believes him when he says he literally napped through the entire century), and he helps Luna with her Old Lucian and with planting a garden full of useful plants with only one or two that can be used for poison.   
  
And he takes Prompto to the chocobo outpost to pick new birds for the royal stables, accompanies him to take pictures in dangerous places at night so that the demons won’t eat him, and he even – under extreme duress, because it seems so  _ridiculous_  -- summons up a flan and lets Prompto pet one (“You’re right, it’s nowhere near as squishy as I thought it would be,” says Prompto, and then takes a selfie with it.)   
  
If Ardyn has that picture framed, no one needs to know about it.   
  
It’s during one such photoshoot that Prompto, attempting to get a perfect shot of the sunset over the Vesperpool, turns to him and says, “See? Isn’t this, like, way better than years of darkness?”   
  
And Ardyn is as surprised as Prompto when he says, “Yes.”   
  
Because it is, and that’s…well, how infuriating. He’s still the Scourge and he’s still a bit miffed at his brother for the exile-and-usurping thing, but it turns out that living forever isn’t all that bad as long as he keeps busy and has a very attractive young man giving him fuck-me eyes while the sun sets.   
  
(And Noctis didn’t say a word about the plaque Arydn insisted be put under Somnus’s portrait in the newly-rebuilt hall of kings that said,  _Founder King* -- *only because he betrayed his saintly brother Ardyn Lucis Caelum, who was much more interesting._ ).   
  
Prompto comes over, wraps his arms around his neck, and kisses him. His mouth is warm and he tastes like – well, bubblegum and something sharp like coffee or one of those terrible energy drinks of his. But good. He tastes good. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.”   
  
“Did you?” Ardyn asks, looking down at him – this strange and unexpected man with Ardyn’s name inked on one wrist, and a memory of Ardyn’s crimes inked on the other, and perhaps the black heart he thought long ago stopped beating gives a few experimental thumps in his chest.   
  
“Yeah. Noct’s like that. He always wants to take a nap when he’s bored, too.” Prompto grins and takes Ardyn’s hat, perching it atop his head before pulling him down for another kiss.   
“Both of you just need to, like. Live a little.”   
  
Prompto reduces Ardyn’s hate and fear and loneliness to something so simple and profound that it should make Ardyn angry.   
  
But it doesn’t.   
  
***  
  
The sun rises, and the sun sets, and Prompto’s name stays scratched like a blessing on the skin of Ardyn’s wrist - reminding him that sometimes the right choice is the one that's hardest to understand when you first see it.   
  
Prompto’s handwriting never does get any easier to read, though. 

**Author's Note:**

> I almost put a thing in here about how Noct and Luna name the next Lucian crown prince "Somnus Ardyn Lucis Caelum" because Ardyn's entire line is full of trolls with terrible senses of humor.
> 
> Also if there is one single plot hole in the game I cannot understand, it's how Ignis Scientia didn't recognize Ardyn _immediately_ as the Chancellor of Niflheim, since Regis knew who Ardyn was the second he walked into the throne room in Kingsglaive. Ignis obvs recognizes the _name_ "Izunia" but it's not like Ardyn is an easy guy to forget??? I DON'T KNOW, SQUARE, THIS IS AS BAFFLING AS YOUR MILITARY HIERARCHIES THAT ARE NEVER CONSISTENT. ahem.


End file.
